I have most of the sourcebooks so I think a lot of this is going to be copypasta. Here we go!(By the way, if you want more information now, give me your email address and I'll send you the quickstart rules, which give a more detailed overview of the game and its setting. I will expand as we start to play, however.)(Also by the way, I realize I have a crapload of reading to do if I'm going to run this game at its best. Please be patient with me!)(Also also by the way, this game will NOT take priority over Nightly Brood. In fact, this will be a oneshot with premades, and, if we make it through the first scenario, you can all make your own characters and I'll be far better prepared. I will post as usual on Nightly Brood (i.e. every time everyone's posted), but this game might slow down a bit if I don't have time. If you like it, or even if you like it more than NB, please let me know!)

Join Firewall, a cross-faction conspiracy that seeks to save transhumanity—at any cost. Alternately, play a character with their own agenda.Switch your body at need, from genetically-modified transhumans to synthetic robotic shells, optimizing your form for specific missions.Back up your character’s mind and be restored from backup in case of death—a built-in system of “save points” and near-immortality.

Your mind is software. Program it.Your body is a shell. Change it.Death is a disease. Cure it.Extinction is approaching. Fight it.

Humanity fell to a dark place during "The Fall." So dramatic was this change that the date system was restarted: BF and AF--before the fall and after the fall.

BF 60+: Climate change, energy shortage, political instability, Earth's a frieakin mess. We expand to Mars and Luna, build a space elevator, develop better AI, get super medical tech, etc.BF 60-40: Start colonizing stuff, make space elevators, living in space is not so bad. Hell, we terraformed Mars, made fusion work, and the rich are dabbling with gene mods, longer living, and cyber implants. Also, we can record and digitize our feelings and experiences (XP).BF 40-20: Earth is becoming a shithole, all that morality stuff about experimenting on humans is out the window so we start cloning things and making dolphins and monkeys sapient. The poor become slaves to the corporations. More colonization (reaching as far as Titan, moon of Saturn). Internet evolves into "mesh," which is like wifi everywhere that you're always connected to via implants and is totally interfaced with VR and AR (augmented reality). Start messing around with strong AI that can think like humans, mostly used in cyber war (netwar).BF 20-0: More technology! Close to colonizing Pluto. "Transhumanity" widespread (Transhumanity = upgraded humans, the step beyond, transcending, mainly via gene mods and cyber implants. The body becomes a canvas, fully upgradeable in unimaginable ways.). Nanotech assemblers (they 3D print anything. 3D print a computer. A car. A gun. Really.), but only for the rich. Can now upload consciousness. More sapient animals (even octopi). Also lab grown humans (called pods) with underdeveloped and cyber-augmented/controllable brains.The Fall: Experimental "netwar" AI self improves, becoming sentient. They learn a bunch using the mesh, advancing their power. Cyber war breaks out on Earth, secretly caused by these AI, dubbed TITANs. Then TITANs attack while Earth initiates civil war, TITANs take over war machines, and all sorts of weapons are used, from biological and chemical to digital and nanotech. It actually turns out they were infected by the Exsurgent Virus created by advanced intelligent aliens that can propagate through both people and computers, rapaciously infectious, amazingly intelligent, highly adaptive, and extremely effective, able to mutate, cross species boundaries (even infecting software), able to subvert cells on the molecular level and even modify your mind and personality.Then the fun stuff: TITANs mass force-upload human minds to the mesh, assault Mars, the Moon, and a bunch of other places.Then they disappear, taking those millions of uploaded minds with them. Earth is now a wasteland of radiation, roaming war machines, nanoswarm clouds, and some other nasty shit that I don't have time to talk about.

AF 0-10: "Pandora Gates," basically 5 wormholes found around the Solar System, are found, which allow travel outside the Solar System to extrasolar worlds, where we meet aliens who tell us to stay the hell away from any more wormholes and seed AI (same crap the TITANs were made of). Aliens don't tell us anything. Then we try to make a mini Kamino with forced clones and time-accelerated VR, but the children either died or went bat-shit-psychic insane, now called the Lost Generation.AF 10: Present day.

There's a bunch of different factions and corporations out there, each with their own agenda, and crime is common in some places. The mesh is basically Internet of Things times 1,000, where everything has wifi and can be remotely controlled. Even bullets. And grenades. And clothing. Yes, your grenades have WiFi access, and you know where your gear is all the time if you're close enough or if the mesh connection is strong enough.You work for Firewall, a secret corporation that fights to protect transhumanity from any kind of threat, like terrorism or resurging TITAN tech. Basically the Free Masons. Also you get paid for it so that's nice. Using the mesh, anything you see can be instantly transmitted to your allies. So metagaming really isn't a thing, because anything your allies see, you see; what they hear, you hear, unless you choose to hide it. Any information or thought can be conveyed instantly; the party can even converse amongst themselves on a secure channel, communicating and relaying information constantly. Pretty cool, huh? Makes managing "what you know" a bit easier since you pretty much always know everything. If the guy with the high perception spots the sniper, everyone sees it, no need to point it out. Get it? Good, because the mesh is one of the most important things to be familiar with in this game.Information that is always available for most people using a mesh in a normal habitat or city: Local maps, climate, solar system and habitat orbit map, public search engines, database, mesh sites (websites), blogs, etc, newsfeeds, public sensor feeds, public facial recognition searches (comparing a photo you have to a public database), personal status (medical/mechanichal) (like blood pressure, heart rate, white cell count, nutrient levels, implant status, etc), location, functionality, sensor feeds, and status reports of your posessions (i.e. you always know where your grenades are), a personal digital archive of your experiences, and knowledge of your reputation score, social network status, and credit account status. Tis quite hard to metagame. You pretty much know loads of stuff.

I also forgot to mention disease. Nanoviruses that give you incredible psionic powers before grotesquely twisting your mind and melting you from the inside out.

Mechanics: d100 system, lower die roll is better. Example: kinetic weapons skill of 60 gives 60% chance of success. You roll less than 60, you succeed. Above 60, you fail. 100 is actually 00. Double digits crit. Crits are fun. Can't wait for one of you to crit. Or get critted. 00 is auto crit success, 99 is auto crit fail.Moxie is like luck combined with determination, it can do special things like auto-succeed a test, allow you to undo a bad crit, flip the numbers of your roll, and other stuff. I'll give you more freedom and allow you to do something inspired by one of my friends: if the game is too boring, pull a Plot Twist that changes up how the game is going or adds a challenge or difficulty. Costs 1 moxie. I might actually give out moxie, and if they turn out to be super fun I'll hand em out like candy. If they are more used to play safe, then they will be quite rare as in you will have to buy them. They're quite expensive.Stat notes: Speed is usually 1, but changes under special conditions (like if you're hyped up on neurochem or some other wackass drug). Basically actions/turn.Durability: HP. Down to 0 and you are incapacitated. Death Rating: Morph is destroyed beyond repaired. Your mind is still fine though (unless you don't have a backup).Wound Threshold: Take more than this in one attack, you get a wound, which is -10 to all stats!Lucidity: Sanity. Down to 0 and you go insane or are incapacitated.Insanity Rating: 2x Lucidity, reach this threshold and you go irreversibly ridiculously irrevocably bat-shit insane. No way to get you back then, your mind is permanently done for and you are gone for good. Pretty much the only way to die for good. But to get to this point.... dude you must go through some crazy ass screwed up eldritch abomination hellhole. Actually those are quite common...Oh wait, that still won't kill you because backups. Good ol' backups.Trauma Threshold: Like a psychic would threshold, also does -10 and causes a derangement. Fun stuff. Oh, the crazy mind games that can be played.... Seriously, in this game, your brain is a playground. So don't let anyone screw with it.Damage Bonus: Determines damage of thrown or striking weapons.

Aptitudes: Base stats basically. If you're not trained in a particular skill you can default to its related aptitude.COG-like INTCOO-like DEX but with hands mainlyINT-like WISREF-like DEX but with body, like reaction time mostlySAV-like CHARSOM-like STRWIL-affects psionic attacks and stress.

Active skills apply during tests. Suppose you are shooting a dude with a laser: you go to your Energy Weapons skill, apply modifiers for cover, range, etc (I do this), and if you roll lower than the final value, you succeed.Knowledge skills apply in various situations, but they are hard to explain.

Armor: 2 types: energy and kinetic, for both kinds of weapons. Some weapons have armor pierce.Motivations: What your character fights for. RP and you get EXP (Rez points) if you succeed in these goals.Rez Points: Allow you to increase stats (like EXP). I'll go over them when we get to it.

Morphs (body) have their own bonuses, traits, and equipment separate from the ego (mind). Your "character sheet" will be its own topic with 2 posts, one for ego and one for morph. Or more, if you have backup morphs. But that comes later.Speed is NOT how far you move (movement rate)! Speed is how many actions/turn (more like turns/round). 2 speed and you go twice in a round while everyone with 1 speed goes once. I think you can get up to 4 but that's really difficult and expensive. But then you can shoot 4 times in a row so who cares. There are also some mods that allow you to take multiple actions in one turn, like hacking a network while shooting at people. There's also beta forks and upgraded muses but those don't come into play until we make our own characters.Muse is basically your digital assistant that can gather information for you and has some stats of its own you can use, but they're not that special unless you order a special one. Special muses are pretty cool, but also kinda OP so if we make characters and you're interested, talk to me about it. Can't have a super social savvy spy suddenly turn into an ass kicking space dreadknight ninja without some consequences. Perhaps trauma. Yes, mental trauma. And lots of derangements. Near insanity, muahaha.

REP is pretty freaking important, the 2nd most important next to the mesh. REP allows you to ask favors and gain information much more easily. To find those people to help you, roll with REP as the target score. REP is like currency that doesn't go away when you spend it (in most circumstances). Like, if you're famous among criminal organizations, they might say yes if you want to, oh, say, crash a small moon into a planet....If you help someone with a task they get a +10. Fun fact.If you fail and try again, you get a -10 each new attempt (like arming a bomb for example. Just don't crit fail )

Whoever wants to hack is gonna have to read up on that. There is a hacker character, if you get it I'll explain it to you. Its network intrusion -> subversion.

I want al of you to read the quickstart rules to page 22, but you don't have to, you can just learn as you go along and I'm sure it will be fine as I answer all your many questions. Please enjoy, and most importantly, have fun!